Forever

by Lewis, Linda Cassidy

  “All right.”

  He said nothing else for a moment, and she sat quietly, looking down at her fingers shredding a paper napkin she’d found lying on the table.

  “What’s going on, Tom? I thought we had a great time last night at—”

  He shoved back his chair and shot to his feet. “I’ve got to go.”

  “Tom … wait.”

  He didn’t turn back, or even hesitate as he stalked through the lobby.

  As the doors closed behind him, Annie jumped up to follow. She caught up with him as he was about to get in his truck. “Tom, please … don’t be angry with me. I don’t know why I … I’m confused.”

  He turned toward her, looking as miserable as she felt. “Annie, I can’t—” His jaw snapped shut. Without warning, he pulled her into his arms and bruised her lips under a fierce kiss.

  For a second, she was stunned. Oh God. I can’t breathe. He’s going to crush me against this wall. With pure primal instinct she shoved Tom back against the truck with all her strength and spun away from him.

  He burst out an apology. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I—” He broke off and reached one hand toward her. “Annie?”

  His voice filtered through to her and she struggled to focus on his face. This was Tom, not Gary. Tom was only trying to show his love. He wasn’t trying to attack her, to rape her, to punish her.

  “I’m sorry,” he repeated, “I didn’t mean to do that—I’ve scared you.”

  “It’s all right … you didn’t know … you—”

  “Didn’t know what?”

  She waved his question away and glanced toward the theater. “I’ve got to get back to work. Could we talk … later? Could you call me after I get home tonight?”

  Not waiting for his response, Annie turned and ran back toward the theater.

  Tom stood by his truck for several minutes after Annie left, trying to figure out what the hell had happened in the last half-hour. Not until two women, getting out of the car in the parking spot opposite his, gave him curious looks did he climb into his truck and start the engine. As he drove home, he tried to make sense of his going to the theater. And then—jeezus—he’d grabbed Annie and kissed her. What the hell?

  He had no memory of his thoughts leading up to that action. The whole meeting seemed unreal. As he drove, trying to reconstruct his afternoon, his hand went to his forehead. With a shock, he realized he was pain free. He’d started for home because of a killer headache, but then what? He could barely remember leaving the construction site. Why had he ended up at the theater? He’d driven there for—

  (For what?)

  To see what she’d found out about Jacob.

  (Liar. You were headed there before you knew about that.)

  Had he been? Yes. He’d wanted—needed—to see Annie, like a junkie jonesing for a fix. She’d become his illegal drug. Forbidden fruit. But he hadn’t found satisfaction. Instead, he’d resisted. He’d walked out. But then he’d acted like a brute and scared her. It was fear he’d seen on her face when she pushed him away, not anger or even disgust. It was terror.

  She’d said, “You didn’t know.”

  It dawned on him there was a lot he didn’t know about Annie. For all the talking they’d done in the past three days, she’d told him very little about herself. When he called her tonight, he would ask questions and not give up until she answered them.

  8

  June 9, part two

  As in most families with active teenagers, having dinner together was a hit and miss thing for the Cogans. Tonight was one of those rare occasions the three of them made an extra effort to be there. Lindsay and Julie handled most of the conversation, and when the subject of college paperwork came up, Tom braced for their usual battle of wills.

  “Did you fill out the residency questionnaire?” Julie asked Lindsay.

  “Yes, Mother.” She had a glint in her eye.

  “Did you mail it back?”

  “I’ll do it tomorrow.”

  “What about the other form?”

  “Which one is that, Mother dear?”

  “I don’t remember, Lindsay, but I’m sure you do. You were supposed to have it postmarked by June twelfth.”

  “If I don’t know which one you’re asking about, how do I know if I mailed it?” Lindsay’s eyes were wide with innocence, but a suppressed smirk dimpled the corners of her mouth.

  Julie glared at Lindsay, her jaw working, then she took a deep breath and tried again. “Lindsay, this is not a joke. They don’t make exceptions for smartasses. Fill out the forms and mail them.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Lindsay snapped a salute.

  Julie responded with a sigh and a what-did-I-do-to-deserve-this shake of her head.

  Tom looked from Julie to Lindsay and back again, unable to believe war had been averted so easily. In fact, they finished dinner in the most pleasant mood they’d managed in a long time, and even laughed together as they cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher. When Lindsay rode off in a carload of friends minutes later, Julie and Tom settled in front of the TV. He felt almost as if he’d stumbled into a Father Knows Best episode. Except he knew he didn’t know best. Lately, he didn’t even know better.

  One thing he did know, Julie still hadn’t gotten around to bringing up whatever she’d considered important tonight. Twice during dinner, when he caught her looking at him, she’d glanced away. And now, though her eyes were trained on the TV screen, they weren’t tracking. She was miles away in her thoughts and definitely working up to saying something. He hoped he didn’t have a clue what that was, because if he did, this was one conversation he’d like to delay as long as possible.

  Once when he was seven, he’d swatted at a hornet—just to see if he could run faster than it could fly. He’d learned that day not to go looking for trouble. Julie would talk when she was ready. He could wait.

  When her phone rang an hour later, she answered and moved to the breakfast nook. Tom couldn’t hear her well enough over the TV to make out her words, but he could tell by the way she laughed that she was talking to Patricia. Were they laughing at him? He could almost feel his blood pressure rise at the thought and, as an added bonus, he felt the first twinge of another headache. He reached for his pocket pack of Excedrin before he remembered he’d left it in the truck, along with his cell phone to avoid an interruption during dinner. A second stab in his temple reminded him he was supposed to call Annie.

  He grabbed the remote, clicked off the TV, and headed into the kitchen. As usual, his boots stood by the door, and he startled Julie when he walked up behind her sock footed. “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you,” he said. “I forgot to finish the daily report, so I’m going back to do it now.”

  Julie never took the phone from her ear, and though she covered the mouthpiece with her hand, she only nodded to show she heard him. Tom figured she was listening to Patricia, and would probably realize later she had no idea where he’d gone.

  *

  Tom hadn’t really intended to drive to his current job site. He’d planned on parking a few blocks from home and calling Annie from his truck, but as he pulled to the curb he discovered his cell phone’s battery level had dropped to two percent. He drove on to the mobile office.

  As he sat down at his desk and reached for the phone, he thought about Julie’s reaction. She hadn’t seemed to think it odd he’d gone out at that time of night. He dialed Annie’s number. If anything, Julie had seemed annoyed that he’d interrupted to tell her he was leaving the house.

  All the air went out of him in a rush. What if Julie knew about Annie? What if she was just giving him enough rope to hang himself?

  “Hello.”

  “Oh! Uh … hi. This is Tom.”

  “Yeah. I’m about to pull into my driveway. Can you call me back in two minutes?”

  “Sure.” He hung up.

  (Don’t call back. Go home.)

  He braced his hands on the edge of his desk and rose halfway out of his cha
ir before it hit him. Annie’s voice had chased away every trace of the anxiety he’d felt seconds before. Julie suspected nothing. He’d let his imagination get the better of him.

  Tom tilted back in his chair and watched the second hand on the wall clock, surprised how slowly two minutes passed. He’d read once that waiting in a room with green walls made the wait seem shorter. He supposed that bit of color theory was the origin of the “green room” in which the guests on talk shows waited. In any case, the walls in this room were white—what little wall you could see between the blueprints, schedules, permits, and notices tacked up everywhere.

  Two minutes and seven seconds passed before he dialed again. When she answered, he got straight to his reason for calling. “I’m sorry I upset you earlier,” he said. “I had no right to kiss you like that.”

  “It wasn’t the kiss that upset me. It really had nothing to do with you.”

  “Oh? It was Jacob. I mean, did you have another vision?” Until that moment, it had never crossed his mind her reaction could have been to something she’d seen. Although he hadn’t seen or felt anything when he kissed her, maybe she had.

  “No. Well … not from a past life anyway.”

  “Okay. So … it was something from your past in this life?”

  She sighed. “I was married. I guess I told you that, but I didn’t tell you that he … he abused me. When you grabbed me like that … well … it was like a flashback, and I reacted out of instinct.”

  “I’ve never hit a woman in my life, Annie.”

  “I believe you. Like I said, I wasn’t reacting to you. I was reacting to Gary. Even after all this time …”

  “How long has it been?”

  “A year and a half.”

  “Were you married long?” In other words, Annie, how long did you let him knock you around?

  “Seven years. That’s a long time to stay in a bad marriage, huh?”

  Yes. It sure as hell was. A lot of damage could be done to a person in seven years.

  “I’m sure it … wasn’t easy,” he replied. Then without thinking he added, “Do you need to talk about this?”

  “I’ve never really talked to anyone about it … except Kate. And she already knew most of it.”

  “You never got counseling?”

  Her laugh jangled like a tumble of empty cans. “Counseling is not exactly a family tradition, though we probably needed it more than most.”

  Tom didn’t know how to respond to that. Suddenly, he recalled something she’d once told him. “You said you’d been in line for a promotion but had to quit the job. Did that have anything to do with your divorce?”

  “Divorce? Well, yes and no,” she said, and punctuated her statement with another hollow laugh. “I lost the job because of him, but he left me after that. That was the best day of my life, but I didn’t know it then.”

  “Oh.” Tom sensed she was about to give him details, information his intuition told him he did not want. Please, don’t say another word.

  “I worked as a secretary at the bank headquarters, and I loved that job. One day the head secretary took me aside. ‘I like your work,’ she said, ‘and I know you’d be capable of taking over my job when I retire in two years, but—’ Let me tell you, my heart sank at the sound of that word. ‘But,’ she said, ‘it’s evident you have problems at home that interfere with your work.’ She reminded me that my position was a visible one, and I’d be even more visible, if I became the president’s secretary. She didn’t come right out and say it, but I understood the warning—makeup can’t hide a swollen, black eye or a split lip.”

  A mental picture of a bruised and battered Annie threatened to form, and Tom struggled to keep from yelling at her to shut up. He did not—did not—want to hear any more of this.

  Annie continued. “I told Gary about the warning, but less than a month later, he slammed me against the brick wall of the restaurant we’d just left and gave me a black eye and fractured cheek bone. I didn’t even know what I’d done wrong, but that never mattered to him. I couldn’t face going back to work looking like hell again, so the next day, I called my supervisor and told her that because of ‘family problems’ I wouldn’t be back to work—ever.”

  Despite his efforts to prevent it, a full-color image of Annie’s ravaged face soared before him, and he was unable to turn his mind’s eye away. He felt sickened, and angry, but most of all, he regretted he had that knowledge. What had possessed him to ask about her past? Annie waited for him to comment.

  “Uh … I … don’t know what to say.”

  “I know. Isn’t it awful how Gary’s temper ruined everything? And then, he had the nerve to act like losing my job had nothing to do with him! He was so cruel. You know what he said when I told him I couldn’t go back to work?”

  Annie deepened her voice in imitation of her ex-husband’s. “As soon as you get your goddam face looking decent, you damn well better get yourself another job ‘cause no wife of mine is gonna lay around the house getting a fat ass.”

  The story she told had stunned Tom back to silence, but the words were rushing out of her, and she didn’t stop for a response anyway.

  “By the time my face healed, Gary decided he didn’t want a wife at all—fat or thin. He walked into the house one Friday evening after cashing his paycheck, threw half the money on our kitchen table, and told me I could have the house, but he was taking the car, his clothes and whatever else he damn well wanted. He’d found some seventeen-year-old blonde who knew ‘how to make a man feel like a man’. That’s how he put it. And on his way out the door he turned back to me and said, ‘I’m filing for divorce, and you’d better not contest it, or I’ll make you sorry you ever met me’. God, I almost laughed when he said that. As if I hadn’t been sorry for years that I’d ever met him!”

  Annie paused, but Tom was still too horrified to speak. If his silence disappointed her, her voice didn’t reveal it when she continued.

  “It’s scary to think what might have happened, if I had laughed at him. You know? I guess it’s a good thing I kept my mouth shut. Anyway, as much as I hated being married to him, it was still a shock when he left me. I pretty much spent the next week just lying in my bed wishing I was dead.” Annie laughed; it was a sound without humor. “But he died instead. Ten days after he left me, he was killed on the job.”

  Finally, something Tom could respond to. “What … how did he die?”

  “He was an electrician, and someone forgot to cut the power to one of the circuits being repaired. He was electrocuted.”

  “My God,” Tom said, not because of the way Gary died, but because if Gary worked as an electrician on construction crews, he might have known the creep. He tuned out Annie for a moment while he searched his memory for the names of electricians he’d worked with. He breathed easier when he couldn’t remember one named Gary.

  “… to do, but I decided I didn’t want to die. I considered trying to get my job back at the bank, but I felt sort of like Gary’s ghost might be waiting there. Lucky for me, Gary forgot to change the beneficiary on his life insurance. So, with that money, I paid off my mortgage and spent the next few months redecorating my house—removing every trace of him, I guess. Then, I planted roses, and treated myself to new clothes, and lunches and movies. I think I just needed some time to heal, you know? One afternoon I was buying a ticket at the Cineplex, when I noticed a little sign that said—take advantage of an exciting career opportunity, and I said, Why not? I know it’s a stupid job, but it’s been good for me. I feel safe there.”

  When Annie drew a ragged breath, he knew she’d started to cry. As selfish as it was, he sighed in relief and took the opportunity to end the agonizing conversation. “Annie, let’s don’t talk about this anymore. Look, I’ll see what I can find out about the hunters like Jacob who carried longrifles, and I’ll call you … tomorrow maybe. All right?”

  “Okay, and thanks for listening.” She sniffed. “Talk to you later.”

  Tom hung
up the phone but sat at the desk for several more minutes. He’d sensed sadness around Annie from the start, but he’d had no idea how abused she’d been—how emotionally damaged she was—until now. Every word she said had sliced him like an X-Acto knife. He raised his hands toward his head before he realized the shock had chased his headache away.

  For the first time since he’d met Annie, he saw things clearly.

  She was a beautiful woman, but she was not a healthy one. He knew nothing about her childhood, but she’d more or less said her whole family could have used psychiatric help. He imagined she’d been abused in one way or another all her life. She’d lived seven years with a man who beat the hell out of her, yet she said only that he had a “temper.”

  And now I’m abusing her.

  Plain and simple. He’d been playing a game with her. What the hell had he been thinking? Annie was not a woman to treat lightly. Never in his life had he known someone so in need of a kind and caring touch. But not from him. He had to keep his hands to himself. They could be friends—no, just acquaintances. Hell, not even that. This flirtation thing was over. Over.

  How had he gotten into this situation? “I must be losing my mind,” he said, his voice echoing in the empty office. He pushed his chair back to stand and then froze. What if he really was losing his mind? The sudden, and breathtaking, return of the pounding in his head assured him that his brain, if not his mind, was still intact.

  *

  After Tom left the house, Julie could no longer concentrate on her conversation with Patricia and ended the call. It was possible he’d forgotten to enter something in his daily report—but she doubted it. Tom was meticulous with his paperwork. Tom was meticulous in almost everything he did. Sometimes that drove her crazy, but most of the time she admired it.

  So, if Tom hadn’t gone back to the job site, where was he? Maybe having a beer somewhere. Maybe alone. Maybe not. The second possibility preyed on her mind. Tom was unhappy; she was unhappy herself but didn’t know exactly why. Did Tom know his reasons?